Direction
by blacksouledbutterfly
Summary: Puck spots a tattoo of the letter 'N' on Rachel's hip.


They've been dating for three months. Rachel moved to New York almost immediately after graduation just like they always knew that she wanted to do. He, however, didn't go right away. It took him about two years to follow and by the time he got there she was single and over Finn well enough to try to be with someone else. And the fact of the matter was that he had always had feelings for her. He denied them and hid them for a very, very long time but he had always had feelings for her.

He didn't let her know about them when he first came to New York. Not because he was shy or anything of the sort- everyone who knew him knew he wasn't shy- but because he didn't want to make things weird between them especially since he didn't have a place to stay yet. And she had offered to let him live there. And the last thing he had wanted to do was to make her uncomfortable with having him as a roommate by telling her that he wanted her in ways that had nothing at all to do with friendship.

Instead he pretended that the feelings he had for her were completely platonic. He acted like he only wanted her as a friend and observed her for a while. He would watch her to make sure that she wasn't lying when she said that she was over Finn. He watched her to make sure that she wasn't looking into getting with someone else, someone he didn't know and probably wouldn't trust. He watched her to make sure that she wasn't still clinging onto her pathetic high school romance that everyone with a brain knew wasn't going to last. Well, everyone besides her which was weird because she was a pretty damn smart girl.

So, as soon as he was sure that she was ready to try to move on and be with someone again after breaking up with Finn they were sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee and he suggested they go to dinner. And at first she just shrugged and agreed like it was no big deal. But then when he clarified he meant it as a date she looked at him like he had just grown an extra head. She couldn't fathom the idea of him asking her out on a date. So he just sighed and sat back in his seat, told her that she didn't have to go if she didn't want do but in the end she agreed to it.

Dinner was pretty awkward at first but that was because she kept looking at him like she was waiting for him to say it was all a joke or just for him to try to make her feel better about being single but that wasn't what happened. Not in the slightest. He didn't ask her there just to make her feel better and he certainly hadn't asked her there as a joke. And once she realized that was the case she actually seemed to start to have fun. And once she started to have fun things went pretty well from there.

It wasn't until about two weeks later he actually asked her to make it official, to be his girlfriend and she seemed hesitant at first because of his reputation and because the time that they did date in high school was all just a way for them to get their minds off of who they had wanted to date at the time. But she had agreed in the end. Not that he had thought she wouldn't. Well, he didn't think that for long, at least. He hadn't let the notion last more than a moment or so before he banished it from his mind just to keep himself from getting too nervous to ask her to begin with.

So, they've been dating for three months and it's been going pretty well thus far. They haven't had any fights and the roommate situation hasn't gotten strange or awkward. They almost acted the same as they did when they were just roommates. Except if a guy even tried to hit on her when they were out he was allowed to get jealous. And he wasn't allowed to flirt with other girls, of course. And there was the constant heavy making out in her bedroom plus the nights he would share her bed and they'd curl up together. True, they hadn't had sex or anything but that was cool, thus far. It was pretty natural. And it was definitely intimate in the least sexual way possible.

Not that it was easy to not have sex with her. Especially after their long make out sessions. And the way she would walk around the apartment in her tiny little shorts she wore to the gym or without any pants on at all, just in a t-shirt and her underwear. Yeah, she was definitely making it very hard for him to control himself but he was doing it because he respected Rachel too much to push her for sex. Pushing her for sex would have just ruined their relationship and he wasn't about to risk that. Not after he had feelings for her for as long as he had. Sure, he had liked other girls while liking her but that wasn't the point. His feelings for her had never really gone away.

Today she was walking around in a pair of her tiny little lace panties- apparently she had grown out of the plain cotton underwear she used to wear in high school, the kind he would get glimpses of when she leaned over in her tiny little skirts- and she's moving around the kitchen to get stuff out of the cabinets for breakfast. Granted, it's about a hundred degrees that day so it wasn't that surprising that she was trying to dress as cool as possible in her underwear and her tiny little tank top but that didn't stop him from finding it unintentionally alluring. Very, very alluring.

He's drinking his coffee when she reaches up to get something out of the cabinet and her tank top rises up exposing part of her tan side when he notices something on her hip, something darker than her skin and he knows for sure it's not a mark he made. Sure, they haven't had sex or anything but there were times when she would let him kiss her stomach, suck the skin into his mouth until it bruised and she was left with a hickey or she'd let him bite her gently. But this wasn't a hickey and it wasn't a bite. It was most definitely black and it was most definitely a letter. And if he was leaving a letter in a hickey on her skin it would be a whole lot bigger than that. It's absolutely a tattoo.

He swallows his coffee in a big gulp as he looks at her, his eyebrows arching. "What does the 'N' tattooed on your hip mean?"

Rachel pauses in what she's doing for a handful of seconds and then continues taking the stuff out of the cabinet, closes it back up before she even acknowledges he spoke, turns her head to look at him. "It's pointing north."

"Expect many people to get lost down there?"

Rachel turns her head slightly to look at him, her eyebrows drawn together in a look he knows very well. She's mentally calling him depraved but it doesn't bother him. He has gotten that look from her a million times before and will probably get it a million and three more times before his life is through. Rachel just finds him to be perverted most of the time and he can deal with that. He can't say that he's not perverted, after all. But it's part of his charm and they both know that's true. She wouldn't change him for the world.

"You're not funny," she tells him in a surprisingly calm tone to which he just shrugs. And that just causes to her to roll her eyes and turn her attention back towards what she's doing.

Slipping out of his chair he goes up behind her, puts both of his hands on her hips, traces over the 'N' on her hip with his index finger. "So," he murmurs as he leans down, presses an openmouthed kiss against the side of her neck. "The 'N' is for north, is it?"

"Yes," she insists. She does her best to ignore him but he's not an easy person to ignore. Not by a longshot. And they both know that whenever she tries to ignore him she fails miserably.

"I call bullshit, Berry." He presses another openmouthed kiss to her neck, his grip on her hips tightening just a bit as he pulls her back against him. Hunching down just a little bit to rest his chin against her shoulder he keeps brushing his finger over the spot where he saw the tattoo. The skin is still slightly raised so the tattoo must be new. Besides, he would have noticed it before it she had it for long. She's not protesting though so it can't still be sore. "I don't see any reason why you would get an 'N' for north on your hip."

"The point of a tattoo isn't for someone else to understand. It just has to mean something to the person who got it."

"And north means something to you?"

"Maybe."

"I still call bullshit." He stops tracing the tattoo and moves his hand higher up under her shirt, slides it along so it's resting against her stomach, one finger brushing the skin just beneath her navel. "You're too smart to get a tattoo that stupid. So, why don't you really tell me what the 'N' is for?"

Rachel shudders as his fingers brush over her stomach like that, his eyes sliding closed, her head tilting back so it's resting against his body. "You're distracting me from what I'm doing."

"And I'll keep on distracting you until you answer me."

She licks her bottom lip, her mouth suddenly feeling dry. "Noah."

"Yes?"

"No. That's what the 'N' stands for."

Smirking a little he turns his head, presses a kiss to her temple. "You got the tattoo for me?"

"Yes."

"That's hot, babe." His finger brushes just beneath the waistband of her underwear before he turns her around and puts his hands back on her waist, lifts her up and tosses her over his shoulder. She squeaks in protest, her hair falling down around her face.

"Noah! What are you doing?"

"Showing you how hot I think that is."

"You know I'm not ready for sex."

"Rach? There are a lot of things I can do to you that don't involve sex. And we both know it."

Despite herself, under her breath, Rachel laughs.


End file.
